


Assists

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bad Bob is a good dad, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, How big is Montreal even, Is Canada even real, LGBTQ Communities, M/M, Montreal Gay Hockey Mafia, Transphobia, Weddings, background Trans Whiskey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-06 00:15:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6729253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's parents drag him to a Montreal Gay Hockey Mafia wedding, and everything seems a little more possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assists

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Stultiloquentia, who was a fabulous cheerleader for this fic and who [came up with the trans Whiskey headcanon](http://stultiloquentia.tumblr.com/post/143336069310/who-you-callin-cactus) I use here.
> 
> Farhad was last seen in [Les Hivers de mon enfance](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468580).
> 
> The wedding is closely based on my cousin's 100% real wedding, held in Calgary's Max Bell Centre, which was just more heterosexual and less snappily dressed. The hockey politics, however, are entirely invented.

Jack goes home to Montreal after his Playoff run ends, and parents give him a week to be grumpy. It was initially three days, but Bob upgraded it on Jack's arrival when Jack explained that the Falconers' run went just far enough in May that he didn't have time to see Bitty in person before he left for his summer exchange. Jack takes full advantage of the vacation, although he's only really in a bad mood for about two; parental leave to be grumpy means they won't tell anyone he's here, he doesn't have to answer the house phone, and he gets to hide in his room when visitors come.

On Day Five, though, Bob asks him if he'd consider going out the next day. "Guillaume O'Neill is getting married. You might remember him, you played on the Hornets together when you were nine."

Jack's actually amused. "Do you keep in touch with everyone I ever played hockey with?" He wouldn't be totally surprised--the only people his parents have admitted to deliberately cutting contact with were his billet hosts in Rimouski, and he figures that when you let someone's kid overdose in your bathroom you don't expect to stay on the Christmas card list.

Bob shrugs. "Well, you know. He coaches the team Carey and Lewisky's kids play on, he teaches at the same school as Marie Dubois, and I sit on a board with his mother. When I saw her today she asked me to tell you that you were welcome to come if you'd be in town by then." He tips his head a little. "He's marrying a man and we want to make a show of support."

Jack stifles a sigh, considering that he _could_ say no. "Sure. I'll come."

That night he finds out that he's grown so much, his arms won't even fit into the tuxedo he bought three years ago. It straightjackets him long before it even settles on his shoulders. He gets his mom to take a picture, and Bitty responds with a video of him laughing so hard Jack's honestly a little worried he'll pee himself. _Please please please_ , Bitty texts him. _Put it on and flex until you rip the seams and Instagram the result._

_:-P_ Jack sends back. He will _not._ But he does let Bob call up Waxman's and get them to wedge Jack in for a rental fitting the next morning before they open for business.

Bitty stays up late to see the results, although he confesses to having to take an after-dinner nap to do it. Aix-en-Provence is six hours ahead of Montreal, and he has to be up at four in the morning to start the bread every day. Jack's usually wishing him sweet dreams around lunchtime, but the tux doesn't arrive until two. They Skype while Jack gets ready, the graininess of the video not at all dimming the appreciative gleam in Bitty's eyes at the cut of Jack's tux. The wedding is black tie, but Bitty helps him pick out a pocket square and cufflinks.

"Ready?" Bob says in the doorway, then, "Eric!" He gestures down the hallway and comes in to say hello. His Cup rings gleam on his hands like blinding brass knuckles. When Alicia appears she is likewise gleaming with jewellery, and comes to lean over Jack's other shoulder to smile at his laptop. Bitty looks dazzled.

"Y'all look like the hockey royal family," he blurts out.

"Thank you, cheri," Alicia says, and Bob grins like a wolf. "I hope we do."

"Next year you'll be with us," Jack promises. 

Bitty grins tiredly. "Damn straight."

Because they do have a plan. They have a timetable. By this time next year, maybe, Jack could be out of the closet, and Bitty, knock on wood, can be publicly out with him. Or--maybe this time next year. Whenever the Falconers end their run in the playoffs, which could be the end of regular season if he has a very bad year, or a month from now in a good one. George has laughingly promised him that if Providence wins the Cup Jack and Bitty can do whatever they damn well like on the ice afterwards, and she will vouchsafe any FCC fines they incur.

Bob puts his hands on Jack's shoulders. "The car is here, so we have to steal this boy away."

"Yeah, g'wan," Eric says with a yawn and a wave, blows a kiss back to Jack, and cuts the connection.

"Disgusting lovebirds," Bob grumbles.

"Oh come on, Papa. We're long distance, we've got to do something."

"Oh, only for two weeks," Bob persists, teasing in the tone that says _In my day we walked uphill both ways--_

Jack looks to his mother, outraged. "We have not! A year and a week and a half."

"Playoffs was hard," she agrees neutrally.

"Spoiled by American distances," Bob mutters as they settle into their car.

"Papa, don't start," Jack warns.

"What?" Bob asks, appealing to Alicia as a neutral party. "He acts like living half an hour up the road is a long-distance relationship."

Jack looks at his mom, who seems tolerantly disinclined to say anything, and considers his dad for a minute. "It's just so hard," he says finally. "You know, it's a kind of relationship goal of ours, to live together long enough that the sex finally gets boring."

Bob's eye twitches, but he sets his jaw.

"Go through an entire tub of edible body paint before it expires," Jack continues wistfully.

"Alicia, make him stop," Bob whines. Alicia pats him with amusement and little sympathy.

Jack smirks at him. "I warned you. Don't start a fight against an enemy with superior firepower."

"All right, boys, enough," his mother says. "How do you think the Stars are going to do tonight?"

Jack recognizes a redirection when he sees one, but if his mom is actually inviting them to talk about hockey she really does want them to change the topic, because it's a suggestion his father is physically incapable of not following.

*

Guillaume marries his husband on the ice in a "black skates, black tie" affair. The centre of the rink has carpets laid over it to support ranks of folding chairs, but the ushers and attendants dart around the island of carpet on skates. Alicia looks a little smug in her silk blazer when she looks at the female guests shivering in their strapless and strappy dresses, but lends her scarf to a teenage girl sitting ahead of her. The grooms wear tuxes and hockey skates; the officiating minister wears a priest's collar over a referee's jersey. It's very... hockey.

When the ceremony is over a bottleneck of guests forms as the elderly and infirm are escorted down the narrow carpet to the only exit laid out, and a few others try walking across the ice in their shoes to go out further down the boards, and the rest mill around and glad-hand and get in the way of people trying to clear out the seats. Jack knows a good half of the guests by sight and they all know him. He finds himself in a small and quiet hell of smiling and shaking hands and mouthing niceties about the playoffs until eventually the crowd begins to thin and he reaches the furthest edge of the carpet.

Then he sees a familiar face--just _how_ small is Montreal's hockey community?--and blurts, "Farhad!"

Farhad Gharadaghi turns to him shyly and comes over to shake hands. Jack's unreasonably glad to see him. He met Farhad playing pick-up hockey the year after he left the Q and Montreal's rec leagues were the only place stepping into an arena hadn't given him a panic attack; Farhad had been nice and cool and good at hockey and coincidentally the first hockey player who'd copped to having a boyfriend around his teammates. Jack might have been a little bit in love with him, once. "Good to see you, man," Farhad says, and reciprocates a hug.

"You too," Jack says. "How are you doing?"

Farhad plays with one of his earrings, smiling slightly. "I'm good, ah. Just got certified as a referee for the minor leagues. That's how I met Adam and Guillaume."

"No kidding? That's great. Ah, how's your family?"

"My one woman in a million?" Farhad looks a little pleased, and a little embarrassed. "Sahar's taken Mehmet out to the car. We're hoping he'll nap in the car before the reception and give us a little time there before bedtime."

"I'm happy for you," Jack says, and means it.

"What about you?" Farhad asks. "Seeing anyone?"

Jack's distracted at that moment by Guillaume skating up, which means another round of well-wishes and hugs, but finally he turns back and answers Farhad's question. "I can't talk about who I'm seeing right now," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Ask me again a year from now?"

They get it instantly, Guillaume's eyebrows going up, Farhad's mouth making a little O. "Oh my god," Guillaume says. "You're not--"

Jack tries to raise an eyebrow and smile enigmatically, which may or may not work. Farhad claps him on the arm anyway. "I'm glad there's something you can't talk about. If that makes sense."

"I'm really glad you came," Guillaume says hastily. "The, uh, support, means a lot to us."

"I'm not, um," Jack says. "Dad doesn't keep me in the loop, is there something going on up here?"

Guillaume's smile gets a bit strained; Farhad grimaces. "The provincial hockey association met to review its policy on transgender players this week," Farhad says. "The meeting got..."

"Ugly," Guillaume says in an undertone, keeping his smile plastered on.

"Oh," Jack says awkwardly. "Is there... anything I can do?"

Farhad and Guillaume look at each other for a minute. "Not right now, I think," Guillaume answers. "But we'll let you know."

*

"Papa," Jack says in the car, on the way to the reception. "I heard about changing the provincial regulations on transgender players? How's that going?"

_Both_ his parents sigh. Bob scrubs his face. "We'll get them approved," he says. "It's just...." he makes a frustrated gesture. "Nothing got decided at this month's meeting, so we'll have to pick the whole issue up again next month."

"If I, uh," Jack says, very carefully. "If I knew somebody who was, in a good position to comment on the matter?"

Bob rubs his chin thoughtfully. "You mean Alex Whistler?"

Jack looks away, shrugs. They haven't talked about the fact that Whiskey's playing for Samwell, or that he crashed in Jack's apartment once after the Frozen Four, or that pre-transition Bob once called him the brightest hope for the future of Canadian women's hockey. Jack's friendship with Whiskey relies a lot on the fact that they're okay with each other's silences. "I don't want to... out anyone, or put pressure on him to go public or get involved in politics if he doesn't want to, right? So if you give me the best number to call, I can pass it on to him, maybe, let him make contact with you."

"Give him Guillaume's mother's number, or mine," Bob says. "Right now the advocates we have working on this are little kids and their parents, or they transitioned after they stopped playing seriously, and it lets people say, this isn't a real hockey concern, it's just hypothetical."

"Everyone's been talking around Whistler," his mom says quietly. "It means a lot that the NCAA lets him play, competitively, on a men's team that's doing well. But he's not out, so we can't actually hold him up as an example and say, look, this is a real kid who really wants to play, who deserves to be able to pick his league and not just be pushed onto a coed team."

"But Whistler's good," Bob says. "I think he could go pro, eh Jack?"

"Yeah," Jack concedes, "but... Whiskey's a private bro. I can... plant a bug in his ear? I'll ask Bitty if he thinks it's a good idea first, though. Bitty knows him a lot better than I do. So no promises. Negative promises. If he's not okay with it I'll tell him absolutely not to do it. Okay?"

"Absolutely," Alicia says, and Bob nods.

*

At the reception, the large screen and projector at one end of the banquet hall are switched from slideshows of the happy couple at 7:00pm sharp for the second game in the Stars-Aces series, and the champagne comes out in earnest. That's Farhad and Sahar's cue to scoop their son up and go home. Jack, who'd been playing keep-away with the two-year-old with a pair of hockey sticks and a balloon stolen from the centrepieces, waves them goodbye. The nicest part of the evening done with, he sits down at a table where he's invited, drinks lightly, and finds himself shouting, "Come on, Parse you asshole," at the screen by the third period. His friend wins the game, which is better than it's not. The couple departs, but the crowd doesn't; after the second game of the evening Jack and his mother take the car home, and Bob promises to call a cab.

Jack opens his laptop and signs onto Skype by habit when he gets back. Bitty's on, but it amuses him rather than gets his hopes up, and he messages

_Bittle_

_Bittle_

_Bittle_

_You left your computer signed in, Bittle_

Except then Bitty calls him. He's sitting outside under the dappled shade of a tree with his earbuds in, a stone wall at his back; he's holding his phone up to see Jack. "Did not," he says laughingly. "Pierre got the wrong shipment of ingredients and pitched a _fit_ , threw us all out of the kitchen."

Someone walks behind Bitty and hisses, " _Français!_ " knocking his white toque off his head as they pass. Bitty turns, laughing, and cusses them out in fluent joual, which means it's Rebecca, the Mount Allison student from New Brunswick. Jack finishes unbuttoning his collar and shapes his hands into a little heart for Bitty.

"How was the wedding?" Bitty asks, in French.

Jack smiles, feeling himself compelled to honesty. He answers back in English, since he knows it comforts Bitty to have an anchor in his native language. "Tacky," he confesses. "And drunk. I would hate to have a wedding like that. But it was sweet, I guess, like all weddings are."

"Yeah? What kind of wedding _would_ you like?"

"I'm sure when you show me your Pinterest I'll love it," Jack says.

"I didn--that was a _purely speculative_ board," Bitty huffs at him and Jack laughs, because the Pinterest thing was just a guess but he knows Bitty so well. "I do not appreciate you chirping me, Mr. Zimmermann."

"Yeah, uh-huh," Jack says by rote, smiling. "I think it was a Montreal Gay Hockey Mafia wedding, because it was like, gay coach marrying gay referee, bisexual referee in the seats, lesbian hockey mom with butch hockey daughter. Maybe they all meet on some internet thing I don't know about."

"Yeah, probably," Bitty drawls. Jack makes a face at him on principle, but he wants to talk about the next thing too much.

"I told some of the guys today. Mostly just that I couldn't tell them, but that might change. It was... really nice. It just made everything feel more real, more possible." He reaches up to touch the camera, and Bitty reaches back. "I guess just because... it's not just me, not just us. It's like moving from just being alone to being part of a team. So it's more pressure because I'm going first, because I'm NHL, but I think today I saw that it could be a good thing. Like, if I just blurted out today, 'I'm gay,' that'd be okay, but if we're smart and strategic about this there are so many _more_ people we could help."

Bitty just keeps smiling at him.

"Oh, that reminds me--maybe I should ask later, Pierre's got to remember you at some point right? But I wanted to ask you about Whiskey, if maybe he'd be willing to come to Quebec City next month talk to some board members for a hockey association here who don't know if they want to allow trans players onto single-sex teams. I just really don't want to pressure him and I'm afraid that even asking will be too much for him to refuse."

Bitty hums, his brow furrowed for a minute. "I don't know, but I'll think and let you know, okay?"

"Yeah, I won't say anything to him until I've got your opinion. But we've already talked a bit about coming out, about strategy, and he has the card for a public image consultant Papa suggested, so it might not be a total disaster?" Jack sighs, dropping his head onto his hand. "I don't know. I miss you. Is it July yet?"

"Oh yes," Bitty says fondly. "You've already missed your flight. Get your ass over here." Jack loves how he can see his own influence on Bitty's French vocabulary, even though it feels daring and risqué that his lover is so well versed in certain phrases, even where anyone can hear.

"I love you," he says. "We're going to have the best summer ever when I get there."

"Yeah," Bitty says with a smile, and bites his lip. "And, sweetheart? I'll show you my Pinterest if you show me yours."

"Okay," Jack says, his heart doing something strange and acrobatic in his chest. "I'm going to let you go so I can get to bed. Talk to you later, eh?"

"Love you," Bitty says easily, kisses his fingertips and presses them to the camera. Jack reciprocates and ends the call.

In the quiet of his bedroom he shrugs off his dinner jacket and throws it onto his dresser. He and his laptop consider each other. He has a complicated thought that doesn't translate well to language about being in the middle of team efforts, about the physical sensation of struggling for a goal and then finding someone on your team has just swept past you on your way to help your team get there.

Then he opens his web browser and, with knitted brow, types in **www.pinter**. It suggests **www.pinterest.com** for him, and he nods his head and clicks.


End file.
